Category: issues

“With his Emirati counterparts, John Sexton is proposing to build an American-style research and liberal arts institution that will attract the world’s most elite students and scholars from day one. Just as grandly, Sexton envisions the Abu Dhabi campus as a kind of network hub that will operate in tandem with NYU in Manhattan to power a new “global university” comprising study sites on five continents.”

“Universities were yesterday embroiled in a furious row over dumbing down after a parliamentary inquiry revealed the number of first-class degrees had almost doubled in a decade.”

Every day young people from all over America stream into New York hoping to make it big. But “is New York still worth the trip? Recessions tend to be hard on youthful dreams, but this downturn has proved especially dispiriting.” And then there’s the internet, which gives access to the bigger world in ways New York always has…

“With the exception of art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher, nearly the entire Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff responsible for covering arts and culture have decided to take the contract buyouts offered to them by the newspaper’s parent company Journal Communications Inc, including music and dance writer Tom Strini, theater critic Damien Jaques, books editor Geeta Sharma-Jensen, broadcast media columnist Tim Cuprisin, and pop music writer Dave Tianen.”

“Could you write a sustained argument on the evil nature of woman, based on all available Western sources? This was Lars von Trier’s proposition to me, a journalist and former university researcher in cultural history. It was July 2007, he was about to finish the manuscript for his [now-notorious] film Antichrist, and he needed me to go through as much material as I could and come up with all the facets of misogyny.”

“The proposed performing arts center planned for downtown Orlando will almost certainly be built a piece at a time, a fall-back plan that reflects the stranglehold the recession has put on the city’s $1.1 billion plan for new community venues. … It’s not yet clear exactly how the design will accommodate multiple phases. The plan calls for three performance halls – seating 2,800, 1,700 and 300 – under one roof.”

“With construction of the performing arts center [in Metairie, near New Orleans] … running a year behind schedule and $10 million over budget, Jefferson Parish has sued the project’s original architect, alleging that numerous fundamental flaws in the design are the source of the complications and costs.”

“[T]he arts teach us morality, humanity, the range of identity, the importance of beauty and ideas and qualities you can’t quantify, the values we hold in common. … They teach us all this through miraculously pleasurable experiences that at their best are akin to spiritual revelation, and that even in their lesser occurrences are a source of delight and understanding. Why does that constantly have to be defended as worthwhile?”

“President Obama is said to have picked David S. Ferriero, now chief executive of the research libraries at The New York Public Library, to be the Archivist of the United States, a post that includes making sure that highly sensitive presidential papers and electronic records are saved and made available to the public.”